


I Am Not the Only Traveler

by mythaster



Series: I Want To Make It Up To You [2]
Category: Adventures in Odyssey
Genre: M/M, Medium Burn, Not Canon Compliant, but i want my main richason thread to have its own thing, i don't know HOW slow, i had to add 'not canon compliant', it follows the plot of some of the apartment-decorating drabbles, like a lot, oops! sorry not sorry, slow burn?, sometimes timelines that are canon compliant.........are worse, this was going to go in the drabble collection but then i decided Nah, when i realized that i had Dunked Up the DBD timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-15
Updated: 2019-12-01
Packaged: 2020-05-12 14:27:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19230970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mythaster/pseuds/mythaster
Summary: All he can think of is another night, when he smelled like cigarette smoke and two-day-old clothes, and he felt like a single desperated bruise. Taking up space in someone else’s home. The idea of taking a shower had seemed like the last shove to a stone rolled up a mountain: one more step, one more push, and everything would teeter - balance - hold its breath - and tip backwards to crush him underneath so he never got up again.Standing outside under a black sky, two stars visible through light pollution, the moon already hidden, and a door opening behind him.





	1. not to ride along with you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The whole apartment-decorating thing begins in some of the drabbles in "the devil gave me a crooked start." I know most anyone who is interested in Richason fic (two full people, I love you, bless you) has already read those but I just wanted to mention.

“I told you, Whittaker,” Richard says, and Jason rolls his eyes, but Richard insists, “I told you! There’s nothing.”

“We didn’t go to the right place, that’s all.”

“No,” Richard says, laughing a little and settling back into the passenger seat of Jason’s car. Cars whiz by on the other side of the road, the road that’ll take them back to Odyssey, back to his apartment with its stack of food he’s only halfway put back into shelves and the toaster that still sits on the floor, his computers on a square Ikea table and the cool white tile floors and the cool white bed and the cool white bedroom. Everything will be cool and white and exactly what he’s not and exactly what he’s earned.

“No,” he says again, buckling his seatbelt when the car beeps its protest, “it’s just that there’s nothing.”

“There’s gotta be something,” Jason says, and, thank God, he still sounds cheerful, like the day they spent together hopping from thrift store to outlet mall to thrift store and back again was a mildly disappointing romp they went on and not something that’s starting to chew at Richard’s insides like a chihuahua with its teeth in a squeaky toy. “We’ll find it.”

All Richard can do is look at Jason - one hand on the wheel, rolling the window down with the other, resting an elbow on the frame like he’s some James Dean Danny Zuko Someone Cool, nothing but casual fun and easy satisfaction in his eyes and on his lips - and then all he can do it not look at Jason, because if he looks too long, then Jason will look back and see it written in Richard’s face, every premature line on it.

Nothing.

+++

Jason does help put up the food, at least.

Richard doesn’t really own music anymore - someone would have to pay him a princely sum to go back home for his old CD collection, which is probably not what he’d want to listen to anyway, and, wait, it’s not at home, this is his home, the cool white tiles and cool white - anyway, he bought a radio, his one concession to the shopping trip. He turns it on as they pack away his food, deciding where what goes. He has two each of all the basic flatware and silverware and dishes. They don’t take up much room.

There is a single indie station in range, and the reception is itchy, inconsistent. Still, he hears one or two songs he knows here and there. A good one, a decent one, a favorite since he first heard it a few years ago. He hums quietly as he places the silverware into a drawer. Two forks. Two spoons. Two knives. A big spoon for stirring with. A two-pronged stabby thing for… meat? Connie gave it to him. He doesn’t know why. He kept it because it’s sharp and a little scary and it feels natural in his hand. 

“Who’s this?” Jason asks.

Richard goes silent. He doesn’t mean to, it’s just instinct, though an instinct for what, he doesn’t know. It’s just a song. It’s just Jason. It’s just words.

“Lord Huron,” he says at last, shutting the silverware drawer. “‘The Night We Met.’”

All he can think of is another night, when he smelled like cigarette smoke and two-day-old clothes, and he felt like a single desperated bruise. Taking up space in someone else’s home. The idea of taking a shower had seemed like the last shove to a stone rolled up a mountain: one more step, one more push, and everything would teeter - balance - hold its breath - and tip backwards to crush him underneath so he never got up again.

Standing outside under a black sky, two stars visible through light pollution, the moon already hidden, and a door opening behind him.

“It’s pretty,” Jason says, the epitome of neutral, and it occurs to Richard that Jason has been listening the entire time Richard was in some other place, and that realization comes on the heels of another one. Specifically, Jason is looking at him.

The kitchen is half-lit, the song has faded out, and Jason is holding a crimson hand towel. Richard has the meat stabby thing gripped in one fist.

“What?” he asks, like the biggest idiot in the biggest country of idiots, and he considers driving the meat stabby thing right through his stupid brain. “I mean - uh - towels in that drawer.” He points. 

Jason slowly opens the drawer. Only when it’s fully open does he look away. “Already stuff in here.”

“Dammit. Wait, sorry. Uh, darnit?”

Jason very obviously squashes a smile. 

“Dammit.” Richard yanks open a drawer at random, then reaches across it to snatch the towel from Jason’s hand. “This is the towel drawer now.”

“You got it,” Jason says amiably. 

“Glad that’s taken care of,” Richard says, which is too many words, but whatever, they’re out now. He wipes his hands on his shirt and looks around. “What’s next?” 

Jason fishes in the shopping bag from the other day. “Cups are all that’s left.”

“Shelf over the dishes. I can—”

“No, I’ve got it—“

And it’s so, so awkward, the weird two-step they do, Jason fumbling the cups he’s already holding when Richard goes to take them instead, then sees Jason already getting them, but Jason is almost ready to let Richard have them instead, so all Richard can hear is a small litany of muttered sorrys between them, and to get away, he scoots to the cabinet and opens it for Jason like a knight raising a drawbridge for a princess. It’s less awkward after that, less weird, because there are only four cups - two small, two large, both sets matching clear plastic - and it’s been so long since the song ended that Richard has almost forgotten what was in Jason’s eyes as he listened to it.

It’s been twenty minutes, and every piece of evidence that Richard lives in this apartment is already vanished, tucked behind doors and under counters. It still smells like industrial cleaner. It’s less satisfying than he thought it would be. If it had taken longer, maybe it would feel… better. Less like a failure or an anticlimax.

“So that’s it?” Jason asks, leaning back against the counter. Even like that, he’s taller than Richard. Annoyingly taller. Richard is not proud of his height. It does help when you need to fling yourself out of moving vehicles, but as far as he can tell, that’s it’s only major benefit.

“That’s it,” Richard parrots back, and dusts his hands off on his hips again, he’s not sure why. Are his palms sweaty? Yes, actually. Then that’s why. He can feel something building up in the back of his chest and he hopes it’s not what he thinks it is. “Uh, you - thanks. I appreciate the help.”

“Any time,” Jason says with another of those smiles that look like they cost absolutely nothing to give. Richard couldn’t begin to explain why that makes him want to scream. “You hungry?”

“I… am not,” Richard says, because that something-building is building fast, and words from the song are coming back - not repaid his debt - by the ghost of you - none of you - two or three bars replaying over and over. And, Nothing, he thinks. Nothing. “I’m pretty tired, actually. Think I’ll go to bed early.”

“Good idea,” Jason says, and pushes off the counter, and is suddenly another half inch taller than Richard. “Then… I guess I’ll see you around?”

“Monday,” Richard says, trying to smile, but it takes too much to make it look real. All of the counters are empty. The table is empty. The toaster is on the floor. “Bright and early.”

And there’s another smile, but it’s tinged with worry. Concern. Richard moves past Jason, to cut the look off before it can look too close, and pretends to mess with the bolt on the door. 

Jason is almost out the door - almost, so close - when the soft, giving, crumbling weight in his chest makes Richard say, almost hoarsely, “I mean it, Jason. Thank you.”

He has to do something to make up for this day. This wasted day that Jason wasted on him. For nothing. (Guilt is an easy coat to slide into. It’s almost a relief to feel it settle on his shoulders.)

Jason looks back at him, almost surprised. Then it’s Smile #4. “You’re welcome,” he says, “really. I mean it: any time.”

Which… seems like almost too many words. 

They hold eye contact for almost too many seconds.

Something is going to break.

“G’night,” Richard says, and shuts the door in Jason’s face.


	2. what the hell I'm supposed to do

It’s not like he’s ever felt _good_ , being who he is. It’s never been about feeling _good_ , or _nice_ , or _better_. It’s always been about feeling safe. Anything more than that was just a perk.

But he can’t remember ever feeling lower than the night on the dark patio behind Jack Allen’s house. 

There were more traumatic times by far. Most of the time he spent in the detention center. The nights - plural, ‘nights,’ count ‘em - he spent setting fires. Trying to apologize to Eugene, and Lucy, and Tom Riley. What he likes to refer to as ‘Taser Night,’ because his therapist only guides the words he uses to write about his worst days, not what he titles the chapters with.

Sometimes, though, his body reminds him in the most incisive, needling ways of that single night, hunched and hurting and throbbing with every bad thing he’d ever felt - reminds him with phantom grief, phantom fear, phantom tremors in his limbs.

And he’s glad that, if nothing else, he has an office to himself. Four walls to hold the phantoms in. He almost cried when Mr. Whittaker told him he could lock the door, lock himself in, if that made him feel safer. 

Okay, okay. He did cry. Not in front of Whit. God, that would have been embarrassing. Just at home, later on, remembering the sensation of turning that lock and listening to it click, nothing but an office with his name on the door and his computers going mmmm behind him. Nothing on the outside to get to him but kids and his coworkers.

It was safety. And it was something else.

+++

The easiest breakfast to make, in Richard’s opinion, is packaged muffins. A single bag makes six muffins, and if two muffins get you through to lunch, that’s three whole breakfasts in a single one-dollar bag. It’s basically magic, as far as he’s concerned. It was back when he made them for Rachel on most school mornings. After years of rarely having access to baking equipment, it’s reclaimed its everyday enchantment.

For more reasons than one.

“What have we got today?” Jason asks, after he’s dutifully knocked on Richard’s office door and Richard has cleared his throat into his elbow twice to make sure he doesn’t sound like a frog that inhaled helium when he gives the okay to come in. It’s always such a production with this guy. 

Richard stops typing and reaches for the plate at the edge of his desk. Trying to be smooth - or, not even smooth, just a person in control of his motor functions and basic facial expressions, that would be nice - he swivels his chair sideways, lounging expressively in it, one arm draped across the back of it while offering the plate upwards to Jason with the other. Best case scenario, it’s _very_ Wilde-esque. Hint, hint. 

No! Not hint, hint. What is he trying to do? This is _Jason Whittaker_. He can’t try Wilde-esque on Jason Whittaker. No, stop, abort. 

“Chocolate chip,” he says, and, this time, he definitely sounds like a frog hopped up on helium.

Richard would very much like to die now. 

“Cool,” Jason said, grabbing a muffin from the plate. “My favorite. Thanks.”

“Good to know,” Richard says, slipping his arm down from the chair back surreptitiously. “How’s the morning going?”

“You know. Morning-ish.” Jason leans his hip against the desk and takes a bite out of the muffin. “You?”

“Everything’s running smooth,” Richard says, setting both feet back down on the floor, flat, not lounging Wilde-esque at all. At _all_. “Tweaking some new Imagination Station programs. Got a new system for running the voices, trying some stuff out.”

“Cool.”

“Yeah.”

“You ever thought about doing some voice work for it in there? I bet you'd be good at it.”

Richard has no idea why his entire face turns hot, but, because it does, he slumps sideways, resting the side of his face in one hand, hoping his over-long hair hides the worst of the rest. “I, uh, actually did.”

“ _Really_.” When Jason says it, all taken-aback glee, some muffin crumbs come out, and he licks them off his lips. “When? What story?”

Richard swallows and fiddles with the computer mouse, writing the alphabet in place with the cursor. “After Chicago. A few years back. Whit… I mean, you know. After Chicago. I crashed here for a few days.”

Jason nods and finishes off the muffin. “You knocked out my dad in the sewers like a Ninja Turtle, gave everyone a heart attack with a water pistol, melted down deeply confidential government secrets, then… came back home to record some audio for a glorified video game?”

Richard finishes off the Z in his cursor alphabet, then reaches for a muffin, rolling it between his fingers before saying, “It sounds kinda sketchy when you put it like that.”

He isn’t expecting the laughter. He looks up in startlement to see Jason flat out _giggling_ , one hand spread across his face, his eyes shut. He is all smoothed-off angles, the cant of his hip against the desk and the soft bend of his elbow and the soothing shadow across his sharp jaw and his curly brown hair and the light catching his eyelashes—

If he isn't the most handsome man Richard has ever seen in that moment, he’ll eat his mousepad. Oh, it’s ten levels of annoying, frustrating, maddening, _unfair_. 

Then something shifts in his stomach: Jason is laughing because of him. _He’s_ done this. Richard Maxwell himself. 

“Kinda sketchy,” Jason says, letting his hand fall away from his face, looking back at Richard, still grinning. “I don’t know how you made it through one of those things. Much less all of them. And everything else, too.”

Richard’s throat squeezes abruptly shut, and the happy tickle in his stomach vanishes. He blinks, then starts his cursor alphabet over. 

“Yeah,” he says.

He feels the pressure in the room fall, the temperature drop, the atmosphere tighten with his single-word response. Or maybe he’s just paranoid. Either way, he expects Jason to leave, now that the conversation has died. This is as long as the conversations usually last. They’re good moments - of course they are, he likes Jason, Jason is his friend - and he refuses to ruin their place in his day by getting greedy for more. What does he expect Jason to do? Hang around his dull office all day while he types, mutters, calculates, experiments? It’s not like Richard is much good at conversating anymore. His gift of meaningless, free-flowing chatter has dried up at the source; he hasn’t practiced in so long.

The thoughts are a growing whir of churning white noise in his head.

“You were really young, Richard,” Jason says, and his voice is just a little bit quieter than before. “Through it all.”

Richard almost loses his grip on the mouse and on himself. Scratch that: he hangs onto the mouse, but the laugh that gets out isn’t at all like Jason’s good, clean, precious laughter. It’s like a harsh squawk, and it takes Richard aback. 

For a long few seconds, neither of them speak, and Richard doesn’t look up. He lost track of his cursor alphabet this time. He starts over.

“Not that young,” he says at last, watching the cursor form an H, an I, a J. “Just old enough.”

“You didn’t even go to jail back then. You went to a detention center.”

Richard thinks, irrationally, about the reflection in his mirror. The premature lines around his eyes, at the corners of his mouth. The threads of silvery white at his temples. Like his body throwing a huge bitchy fit about belonging to the utter criminal idiot soul riding it like life is the Indy 500 and the finish line is on fire, so why not crash as soon as possible and take some jackasses with you?

“Listen, Jase,” he says, and, despite everything, his limbs take over, taking his Wilde-esque pose from before: slung-back arm, one knee hooked over the chair arm. “It’s kind of early for a walk down memory lane. Especially - like, my memory lane is frequently on fire. Metaphorically and literally. So.” He licks his lips and tries to pretend he didn’t hear the slight whimper in his voice. “I… I’d like… to not. Think about it.”

Jason looks stricken for a moment before straightening and turning to fully face Richard, which is somehow worse. “No, no, I understand. I’m sorry, Richard.”

“Don’t apologize, it’s fine.”

“It’s not fine. I should have realized.” Jason hesitates. He actually hesitates. It’s not that he stops, then thinks of something else to say; he struggles, briefly, with the words, his lips moving before any sound actually comes out. “You… you can… if you ever do need to talk, though. I know you - you go to therapy, which is great. But if you… you know. Want to go out sometime. Talk, or not talk, just… whatever.”

Richard looks at him blankly.

“Let me know,” Jason finishes. “I’m usually around.” Another pause. “The others, too. Connie and Eugene, mostly. We could go bowling.”

“Bowling,” Richard says.

“Yeah. Or… whatever you like to do in your free time.”

This, at least, makes Richard snort, releases the pressure that was sitting on his chest. “I’ve never had free time, Whittaker. Your guess is as good as mine.”

“Bowling, then,” Jason says, and smiles, as if in relief. “With the others, I mean.”

“Yeah. The others.”

“You have my number, right? So you can let me know. When you want to go.” 

“Uh… no, actually.” 

“Here, let me…” 

And, despite the fact that Richard has his phone sitting on the desk and a literal pad of paper, complete with pen, sitting at his right hand, Jason comes around the desk and holds out his hand, towards Richard. “May I?”

By some Herculean sense of self-control, hitherto unknown to man, Richard doesn’t shy back. He does, in fact, the opposite: he extends his hand. It’s the one that got burned in the Blackgaard’s Castle fire; there are faint pinkish yellow patches up that entire arm to the elbow, faded with time but still furrowed with thin, dry, feathery wrinkled patches. Jason glances at the scars but easily takes Richard’s hand, cradling it in his own, turning it palm-side up. 

Jason’s hands, in contrast, are confident and certain, with perfect nails and a gentle, soothing grip. He reaches for the pen on the pad, flicks it open, and writes a line down Richard’s palm.

Richard would have been ready to jump out of his skin if it weren’t for the fingers wrapped lightly around his hand and upper wrist, tethering him steady. As it is, he almost sways in his seat, the light bite of the pen sending a shiver down his spine.

Jason finishes, lays the pen back down on the pad, steps back, and smiles. There is no lingering of their hands together - Jason is holding him one second, then not the next - and Richard has to breathe in deep to reorient himself.

“Cool,” he says, looking at the number on his hand. Is this real life? Is this a real thing happening to him? A number scribbled on his hand? What movie is he in right now?

“Well… enjoy the rest of your morning,” Jason says, backing around the desk again. He grabs another muffin off the plate before leaving, tossing a quick wave behind him.

The door shuts, and Richard slumps.

Briefly, he experiments: he twists one arm around, cupping his number-scrawled hand in it. He can’t get it right; it’s not the same. 

Obviously.

+++

He had smelled like old cigarette smoke and the inside of a car for too many days and old shoes and hunger, hunger, hunger. 

The sky had been black and his shoulders had ached and fresh air had almost been too much for him. Rest wasn’t his yet; how was he supposed to know what it felt like? He hadn’t earned it yet.

He remembered sinking to his knees at the edge of the patio, gripping the bannister in both hands, digging splinters into his skin. The sky was black with only two stars showing, two eyes peering.

He heard a car drive into Jack Allen’s driveway. Saw the swathe of headlights. Heard the doors. He ground the top of his head into the railings. Whoever it was, they’d go in, go to bed, never notice him outside, it didn’t matter. 

The sliding door slowly slid open.


	3. who has not repaid his debt

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A continuity note: this was supposed to be Chapter 4, but I've stalled out on Chapter 3, which is fine because it's a more chill, sort of filler chapter, and I got obsessed with this chapter and decided to go ahead and post it as Chapter 3 anyway. The new Chapter 4, which will be up soon, I hope, is the chapter with the context for Richard's being a trekkie and Jason's "betrayal." That's really the only continuity mixup. Hope that's not too much of a problem!

Odyssey was a small town with an inveterate small-town charm. No getting around that, no matter how often Richard halfheartedly tried. But it wasn’t that small. And Odyssey certainly wasn’t Whit’s End - idyllic, welcoming, forgiving - writ large. 

It had, for instance, journalists like Bryan Dern. It had a local online news presence. It had, in a cringing concession to worst of the twenty-first century so far, a Facebook page-based gossip rag. 

“Don’t look at that stupid Odyssey Sun page,” Connie told him repeatedly. “It’s a bunch of garbage! It’s not even real news. There are like, alien sightings every two weeks.”

Richard had the presence of mind to slap on a mask of fake injury. “Hey, I sent in the last one. It was in the drying machine on the third floor.”

“Oh, boy, our Trekkie’s gonna talk about aliens now, huh?”

This time, Richard scowled. “He wasn’t supposed to tell you.”

Connie minced off to the closest freezer, superfluously wiping it down, like an ice cream freezer lid could collect dust or something. “I’ve known him longer than you have. He’s loyal to me!”

“Uh huh,” Richard said, and looked back down at the Facebook search results, half to avoid talking about Jason’s betrayal any longer. He should have gotten a blood promise. Would that have been tacky? Probably. Better that he didn’t.

“I’m serious, though,” Connie said, tossing the sponge into the sink before giving him a weird look. The look leaned towards ‘sad,’ and that made Richard very uncomfortable. “Don’t go poking into it, okay?”

+

That was two weeks ago. It had been just under a month into Richard’s employment at Whit’s End.

Today, while on his lunch break, he slips out to the back of the building, where the patio seating - all handmade picnic tables covered with candy-colored umbrellas - is devoid of customers. He settles into a seat at the far end of the patio, unwraps his sushi sandwich, and finds the Odyssey Sun on Facebook.

It’s garbage. It’s all garbage. And none of it has to do with Whit’s End. Of course it doesn’t! Whit’s End has been squeaky-clean for almost a year. The biggest drama lately was when a couple kids got in a food fight, sparking a serious conversation about food waste and social responsibility and - anyway, that’s been it. They’ve all kept their heads down. Okay, everyone else has behaved normally, the way normal, non-ex-criminals probably do. He kept his head down. He kept his nose clean. He came in to work on time, got an apartment, tried his level best not to attract attention, he--

\--is in a picture above an Odyssey Sun article. The headline reads, in all caps, LOCAL ARSONIST AND THIEF WORKING IN CHILDREN’S EMPORIUM?

Richard stops.

This is nothing new. This is what life was when he got out of the hospital. This is what he expected. This is what he deserves.

This is going to make him sick.

He shuts off Facebook, tucks his phone back into his pocket, and rewraps his sandwich. It’s all of five minutes into his lunch break but he replaces everything in his backpack - sandwich, laptop, a book Lucy lent him - and goes back inside, headed to his little office. He doesn’t look anyone in the eye on the way up - neither patron or coworker - and when Connie calls his name, he pretends he didn’t hear.

+

Thing is, he still has occasional fire dreams. 

They’re not so much “fire dreams” as dreams trying to drag him back to those nights. Sometimes it’s him in a dark building, and he can’t find his way out, and something burns on his wrist. Sometimes he’s in a clear field and there’s heat coming from somewhere, not that he can run in the dreams anyway, and drops of sweat roll down the back of his neck. Some dreams he just holds a pack of matches in each hand, and someone moves near with a lighter flicked on, and no matter how hard he tries, he can’t wriggle away. Sometimes it’s just his burned hand aching; sometimes he smell burning electricity so intense that he wakes up four or five times in one night, panicked that his room is on fire.

Sometimes Blackgaard is in the dreams. But those are abstract, so hurtful that they turn into a sleepy sort of soap opera, all the corny dialogue forgotten in the light of day even though they still hurt where it used to matter.

He isn’t sure if it still matters that it hurts. There’s nothing to save himself from. It’s all over; he has, as he once said so glibly, paid his debt to society. 

That’s what Mr. Allen said, along with Connie, and Lucy, and even, as if at knifepoint, Tom Riley (and because Richard recognizes the wild passion that unexpected guilt can foist on a person, he isn’t surprised that Tom Riley is less generous after their first hospital bed conversation, and he can’t fully resent it, because hey, that’s why Blackgaard’s Castle burned, isn’t it?). Eugene avoids the conversation. So does Jason. 

Then again, according to the comments section under the Sun article, Mr. Allen and Connie and Lucy and half of Tom Riley’s strained conscience might be in the minority.

He can’t work. The article - the picture of him, taken as he and Eugene huddled behind a pushed-out freezer, trying to figure why it was making a tea kettle whistle every seven minutes - hunts down the scraps of his attention like a fox in a chicken coop. He gives in an hour after he was supposed to take his lunch break. He doesn’t read the article. No, the comments section is worse.

Judging by what seventy-four commentators suggest, Whit’s End might be losing business in the near future - or now, since the article is two weeks old. A lot of people are especially loyal to Riley, outraged on his (and, the detail that drives the knife right home, his horses’) behalf. Some comments are helpful paraphrases of the article’s ultimate theory: that, if Blackgaard died beneath Whit’s End, what better place for his thug to be than in the building, waiting?

Thug.

Bart Rathbone has the unmitigated gall to express outrage. Two people have thumbs-upped it. And that’s the straw that breaks the arsonist’s back.

Richard is on his feet and throwing his backpack over one shoulder almost before he decides to go. He calls the main office on the way down the stairs and prays it goes to voicemail.

“Hello?”

No. Richard stops on the next landing down, swearing under his breath. What is Jason doing, answering the office phone? He doesn’t work here.

“Uh... you okay?” Jason’s voice asks, taken aback. Oh, yeah. The language

“I’m - hey, I’m sorry,” Richard asks, rubbing the side of his face before starting back down the stairs. He thinks there’s an emergency exit somewhere. Somewhere that doesn’t funnel him right into Whit’s End’s main rooms. “I have to take off the rest of the day, is that - uh, cool?”

“What’s going on?”

Now he sounds borderline concerned. Richard stops one last time, still in the stairwell; he breathes in deep and slow, releases it silently, and makes himself sound sheepish. “Yeah, I... must have gotten some bad salmon for my sushi. Sorry. I don’t wanna make a mess in my office, you know?”

Silence. Richard clenches his eyes shut. His hands are shaking, had he realized that before? Yeah? It’s not a surprise. He flattens his free hand against the wall. 

“You didn’t even come down for a break,” Jason says.

“Yeah, I did.” Not a total lie. “I was in back.”

“I was in back, with Connie.”

“Must not have overlapped. Hey, Jase, I have to go. You can tell Mr. Allen to take it out of my pay, right?”

“Yeah - I mean, no, that’s not a problem, but--”

“Thanks. Bye.”

Richard takes back alleys and the smallest residential roads he can find, all the way back to his apartment, and it still feels like he’s being watched. Assessed. Examined for flaws, for damage, for a sign when he’ll blow up next.

+

Once upon a time, the door onto Jack Allen’s patio opens, and a trapezoid of light folds out a few feet from his spot against the railing. He stiffens, but waits silently for Mr. Allen’s voice.

It doesn’t. He shifts just enough to pull his head up from the railing bars. It’s too late to move. He’s already been seen like this. Beating down the panic - flaunting weakness is a great way to get beaten up or threatened or mocked or in general cut down to proper size - he swats at his dampish face, smoothing the lines from his brow and mouth.

Slow, steady footsteps come closer, and Richard feels his shoulders inch up closer towards his face. He is too tired to relax them.

He entertains the thought, briefly, that it’s Blackgaard. He knows Regis’s footsteps better than he knows his own, and those aren’t his - not Myron’s, either, thank God - but he thinks for a flicker of a moment that it might be nice if it were. 

Regis wouldn’t let him off this patio alive. Not this time. The hairs on the back of his neck prickle as he imagines Regis standing there, at arm’s length behind him, the muzzle of a pistol pointed into his skull.

There is no gun, and there is no Regis.

Finally, a voice. Unfamiliar. A man’s. Self-assured and steady, even at a low volume. If voices were colors, it would be indigo. 

“You must be Richard Maxwell.”


	4. when the night was full of terrors

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this fic should just be called "richard makes jason stand on his landing for an awkward amount of time because he's afraid of letting him in (both inside the house and into his Heart)"

All right. He can admit it; he’s big enough for it, metaphorically speaking: maybe he overreacted.

But by now the blinds are pulled to, and the apartment is dark; he has the socks he got at Christmas on, and they’re a single drop of color in a gray cheap room; he has a package of Oreos and a deck of cards; the door to his bedroom is locked, too. He’s wrapped up as tight as can be, in walls and locks and socks and the soft blanket Jack Allen got him when the hospital set him loose.

So maybe he overreacted. Too late now to change his mind, isn’t it? What would he do, call Whit’s End? Risk catching Jason again, having to explain… something? The lie is almost more uncomfortable than the truth.

_Sorry, Jase, I just lied about the sushi to get out of an hour of work. You know, the hour I get off by law anyway._

_Sorry, Jase, I had to get out of that room so I could stop thinking about how I might hypothetically set it on fire._

_Sorry, Jase, some strangers on the internet hurt my little feelings._

God. No. He’s dedicated to this off-day now. Call it avoidance, call it self-care, call it hiding in the corner until the bad feelings cut it out and let him be. Whatever. He’s staying in.

He lays out the first level of Solitaire, crisp and tidy even on his rumpled bedspread, and begins to play.

 

 

The nurses were good about not making him feel… different. Most of them, anyway. There was one, the exact age as his mom, at least that was what he’d say if he were pressed to guess, who looked at him exactly the way his mom used to look at him, when he was younger and stupider and brasher and cared less about absolutely everything except, maybe, his bodily welfare. It hurt, but not as much as the pits caved into his head and ribs and knee. (Okay, they weren’t pits, but that’s what it felt like. Like someone took an ice cream scoop to his skin and bone and dropped the results in Trickle Lake. Sometimes it felt like he was hobbling around like that, full of holes, and everything was spilling out - feelings, terror, blood, guilt, dirty jokes, cigarette butts, more guilt, muscle, lime jello, taser smoke, shame. He wanted to ask the nurses how accurate it was but he was afraid of how they’d answer.)

His head tumbled for a long time in the hospital, shaking memories together and blanking others out. Once he forgot Lucy’s name. It scared her, he could tell, but then he remembered again, and he never forgot again, not when she pressed it into him with both hands wrapped around his. He had never been held like that.

The first time he could remember seeing Jason was the day he got out. Jason was behind the wheelchair, pushing Richard to the car, smooth and easy and strong. Quiet and thoughtful, Jason mentioned a previous visit, one that Richard couldn’t remember. He wished he could; before he could stop himself, he wondered if Jason had held his hand anything like Lucy had. He glanced up at Jason, at the strong lines of his jaw and aquiline nose, his face golden in the late morning sun.

“I’ve got to be out of town for a week or so,” Jason explained on the way to Jack Allen’s house. “But Jack’ll need something to do anyway, with Whit’s End out of commission and all. Think you’ll do okay?”

Richard, dazed and aching, combing through the dry tumbled laundry of his drugged-up brain, fumbled for a smart response.

“I’ll try to manage without you,” he said, then promptly fell asleep against the car window. When the car stopped, he roused just long enough to feel Jason’s arm around his back, guiding him from the seat, like his father had once when he’d had his wisdom teeth removed and the drugs were still buzzing his blood sleepy, and God, no, he wasn’t thinking about Jason and his father in the same thought, in the same comparison, Jason was - Jason was strong, and handsome, and kind, and loyal, and he should _tell_ Jason these things, he should get it across, he should - Jason should _know_ , and Richard fell asleep again as soon as he hit the wheelchair.

 

 

In compliance with his favorite avoidance rules, there are no clocks or time-keepers of any kind during his Solitaire marathon. It has to be dark; he has to be disconnected. He has to be cut off for his brain to stop running through the same damn ruts, the same old words from the article, the same number 2 above Bart Rathbone’s comment, the same picture he hadn’t known was taken of him, the same old words—

The cards in his hand slip from a combination of his sweat and shakiness and they fall in a pile, ruining the order. Richard runs both hands through his hair and breathes.

Breathes.

Breathes—

They took his _picture_. 

—and hears someone knock.

He curses softly and shuffles the cards all up into one big giant mess. Then he crawls out of bed, leaving the blanket on the floor by the bed’s foot, and unlocks the bedroom door. Sticking his head into the rest of the apartment, he calls, “Who is it?”

For a long second, there’s just silence. Richard scratches the back of one ankle with the opposite foot.

“It’s me. Just wanted to… see how you were doing.”

Richard curses less softly and looks down at his socks. It’s not like he can just yell at Jason to bounce. He’s not in _that_ bad a shape, at least he shouldn’t be, which never makes difference, but the fact is, he shouldn’t be moping in his room in an artificial dark. And, anyway, Jason won’t stay. He’ll say, _Oh, glad you’re feeling better_ when Richard tells him that, yes, he _is_ feeling better, thanks for asking, and then he’ll leave Richard alone again, and he can redeal his Solitaire hand and spend the rest of the night getting his mind out of its rut.

“Richard? You there?”

 _Unfortunately,_ Richard thinks, and goes to the door.

He hadn’t realized just how late it had gotten; Jason is a silhouette against a dusty dark gray-blue sky, the first showings of stars peeking out just beneath the eaves of the roof. When the interior light brightens his face, Jason smiles, but it’s not a certain thing.

“I tried to call,” he says, “but you didn’t answer. We got kinda worried.”

“Sorry, I left my phone in the kitchen.” Richard holds out on arm, a kind of lame _ta-da_. “I’m good, though. Thanks.”

“Sure,” Jason says, and gives him a quick once-over that Richard has to pretend he doesn’t feel in his bones. “You feeling better?”

“Loads.”

“Good.”

Richard waits, his brain too tired to come up with anything else to say, and since Jason is the one who knocked on _his_ door, he figures it’s Jason’s prerogative to—

“It’s just,” Jason says, rubbing the back of his neck, “Connie said you liked that stupid article from the _Sun_.”

The world holds for a full second after that, steady and unchanged. Then Richard blinks, and he feels his blood leave his face and his stomach swap places with his heart, which is definitely an overreaction, but—

“Ha, uh, what?” he says.

“Connie was checking Facebook after work and it showed up that you… you know, formally ‘liked’ the article. The one with the title…”

He must have accidentally hit the like-button on his crazed fumble to get back to his office, or to get out of it again. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no.

Jason licks his lips, uncomfortable and this close to squirming. “Richard, we all told you not to go looking up that stuff.”

“Okay, _Dad_ ,” Richard says, which is utterly uncalled-for, and Jason’s eyebrows press up and there’s a certain pinkness to his cheeks now. Richard squishes his hands into his face. “I mean… no, I’m sorry, you’re right. I… it was stupid. I was stupid.”

And, really, isn’t that all there is to it? Richard keeps rubbing his eyes until he sees multicolored spirals, which is how long it takes for him to realize that Jason isn’t talking. He peeks up.

“All right,” Jason says. “Can I come in?”

“What? Why?”

“We’re worried about you,” Jason says, and something about that twists in Richard’s chest, bad and good and it makes him melt and it makes him angry, and then Jason adds, “ _I’m_ worried about you.”

“Don’t be.” It comes out without Richard’s approval, quieter and tireder, his hands still half over his face. “I’m handling it.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I’ve been handling it a long time.”

“Maybe that’s the problem.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Richard asks, feeling his hackles rise, like _he’s_ the one who deserves to get defensive when he knows exactly what he’s been doing since he left Whit’s End at 12:08 PM this afternoon. “Am I doing a bad job being a - a - a normal person? What am I doing wrong, Whittaker? Tell me, I’m dying to know. Tell me how I can do this better. Give me a clue. Please.”

Somewhere along the way, the words lose their pissed-off razor’s edge and get jagged, cutting his throat on their way out, making his eyes sting, and he _hates_ that sincerity bleeds out, too, that at some point the words decided to be honest and his voice got it on it. He’s this close to losing it and Jason’s still standing outside on his landing in the growing dark and Richard’s still in the socks Jason gave him for Christmas.

“Please,” Richard repeats, even softer.

Jason looks like the whole sky has fallen right into his hands. He pushes the door open a little wider and eases inside, until Richard shuffles to the left and lets him in all the way, and then pulls the door shut again, leaving them almost toe to toe.

“Why’d you look?” he asks.

Richard has never felt this conflicted about Jason’s height before. He shrugs and manages to back away, going for the sofa and sitting at the far end. “Don’t know.”

“It’s been a while since Connie brought it up… why—“

“I don’t _know_. I got… weird, I guess. You get weird sometimes.”

The corner of Jason’s mouth twitches, and, slowly, he goes to sit at the opposite end of the sofa, both feet flat on the ground, elbows on his knees. The one-and-two-halves of the cushions that separate them is too much and not nearly enough. “When you’re traumatized and trying to cope, but there aren’t a lot of people who’re putting in the effort to understand?”

Richard blinks again and gives him a sideways look, almost suspicious.

“It’s not like it’s not obvious,” Jason says gently.

“I’m not… traumatized. You can’t put it like that.” Richard drags one foot up on the cushion, so he can hug his leg to his chest. “You do stupid things, you get stupid results. I just… gotta get used to the results.”

“Exposure therapy, that it?”

“Maybe.”

Breathing out slowly, Jason shifts on the sofa, getting a little closer, pointing a little more towards Richard, the all-important body language of the direction of the feet. Richard chooses to stare at those feet instead of make eye contact. “Can I tell you something?”

Richard flicks his gaze up to Jason’s. “Uh… yeah. You know you can.”

For a second, Jason almost squirms. Then he scoots just a bit closer one more time. The distance between them is one-and-a-half cushions now.

“I messed up a lot during the whole…” He waves a hand. “Blackgaard thing. People got angry at me and they had every right to be. I pushed other people away. Made… made choices that got other people hurt, when they didn’t need to be. I’m not putting… my mistakes on the level with yours. I’m not the one punishing myself with really stupid, really _unauthorized_ internet articles. But… you’re not… you’re not alone.”

Richard swallows.

Jason looks down at the cushion between them for a few seconds, then shakes his head. “Everyone was missing my dad,” he says quietly. “I… tried to fill the gap. And I didn’t do too great.”

“You did your best,” Richard says, his heart beating a little faster as he coaxes the words out, trying to give what Jason needs. “That’s all we can do, right?”

Looking up again, Jason gives him another half-smile. “Now look who’s talking.”

For some reason, Richard blushes.

Suddenly there’s less cushion between them than before, with almost an equal amount to either side of Jason. “But that’s what I’m saying. We’re both - we’re all just trying our best, okay? You can’t… punish yourself and expect to be okay afterward. You can’t punish yourself and expect to do your best. And… and you’re already doing such a good job, imagine how much easier it could be.”

Richard’s eyes smart again and he tears his eyes away from Jason, looks the opposite direction, tucks his chin briefly on the other side of his hugged-close knee. Then he manages to laugh, though he hears the tightness in his voice. “I… I swear I’m not fishing for compliments. But… uh… thanks.”

“I mean it. We’re doing our best, Richard.” He pauses. “I’m proud of one thing I did during the whole Blackgaard thing.”

Richard tries to stealthily wipe his eyes, but it doesn’t work well, and he has to ask, “What?” while still facing away.

“Trusting you.”

The tightness that’s been winding up in Richard’s chest the whole day squeezes one last time and then forcibly untwists, coming up through his throat and his eyes. He presses his forehead to his knee and tries to laugh through the first, uncontrollable gulp of tears. It sort of works. After that, it’s quieter, and he’s thankful, because Jason isn’t saying anything and—

And instead, Jason is wrapping him up in both arms, and it’s a little uncomfortable because now Richard’s leg is digging into his ribs and it hurts his knee a little and his other leg, the bad one, is at a weird angle, but, God, it feels like the first safe thing Richard has ever known, and he twists into the hug, not too much but just enough to feel that the way they fit together, even like this, is damn near perfect.

When Richard’s done crying, which doesn’t take long, thank goodness, Jason lets him stay there, just breathing, breathing, breathing.


	5. take me back to the night we met

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the full story.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was writing this chapter and suddenly realized, holy yay, y'all, I'm writing non-canon compliant fic. and I hadn't even noticed up to this point. guess who's got two thumbs and a desperate need to update their fic's tag list? THIS GUY

“You must be Richard Maxwell.”

Richard was tired of introducing himself. Tired of hearing his full name. Everyone used the full name, it felt like. They didn’t know him or they didn’t like him so they used the full name.

He wiped at his eyes, though he hadn’t started doing anything embarrassing yet. Just to be on the safe side. This was where he’d usually try to smile, too, if he hadn’t been sucked dry, emotionally speaking, by that whole day. The whole entire damn day.

He let go of the fence rail and sank back into a cross-legged position, feeling his shoulders slump, his spine curve. “Unfortunately,” he said, “yeah.”

There was a long pause, and Richard had to admit, he was still listening, absently, for the click of a gun or a switchblade. Then: more footsteps, behind him in the dark, until whoever-it-was leaned, tired, on the railing, one leg bent forward.

Richard glanced up at his new companion. It was hard to see details - the low evening light swallowed any nuance he might have made out in black hair, light brown skin, dark eyes, dark clothes - but the person was tall and, despite his weariness, relaxed, and apparently content to sit in Richard’s trademark Sadness Aura until someone else broke the silence.

Breaking things had always been one of Richard’s specialties. “Who are you?”

It could have been construed as rude. Probably should have been. But the new guy only said, quietly, “Jason.”

That sounded familiar. Then it hit him. “Whittaker?”

“Yeah, actually.” Jason Whittaker glanced down at him for the first time. “Should I be surprised that you know me?”

“Like Whittaker - Mr. Whittaker - your dad - could keep from talking about you. At least ten times.”

Richard’s nerves returned. Jason Whittaker was, or had been, or sometimes was, a member of a certain group of law enforcement, as far as Richard knew. The same place Whit had came from, if he remembered right.

“How do you know who I am?” he asked, trying to casually slip a few inches away.

If Jason Whittaker noticed, he didn’t show it. “Good friend of Jack’s. He told me about his new roommate. I figured you might be him.”

“Is that all he told you?”

“No,” Jason admitted, and it sounded like he smiled, why would he smile?, “but with everything I’ve heard today from everyone I’ve talked to, I think I’d better hear something from you, too, before I make up my mind.”

Richard’s spine straightened again, correcting his posture for the sole purpose of being ready if he had to make a break for it. He didn’t think Jack would tell anyone potentially dangerous about who Richard was, but who knew? He didn’t know how well Jack knew Jason Whittaker. He didn’t know Jason Whittaker at all. This could still be it. The end of the line. He could go back to jail. He could go back to jail for a long time, depending on what Jason Whittaker wanted, or on what Jason Whittaker decided to do with whatever power he still had. It sounded like he might have already talked to Tom Riley; what if Riley had stirred him up, made him decide to do something about Richard Maxwell? What if--

It was the final straw on a very tired camel. Richard jumped to his feet, grabbed the fence railing in both hands, leaned over, and puked right into the dahlias on the other side.

He was still sputtering and gasping for breath when he felt the touch, light and tentative: a hand rubbing circles into his back, soothing. He startled and slid away, wiping his mouth on his t-shirt’s long sleeve and putting his back to the railing.

“Make up your mind,” he croaked, his throat scratchy and raw, “about what?”

Jason Whittaker put up his hands in a gesture of peace; his expressions were a language Richard could finally read by the light of the moon. Concern. Worry. Uncertainty.

“About what to do,” Jason said, “with the information you have on Blackgaard.”

Richard choked a little on leftover bile and tried to clear his throat. “What do you know about him?” he rasped, coughing again.

Jason hesitated. “We’ve encountered each other,” he said. “I thought he was dead.”

“Right.” Richard massaged his throat, like that would help. “We should be so lucky.”

The corner of Jason’s mouth quirked. “What do you know?”

If he had already talked to Jack - worse, if he had already talked to Riley - Jason Whittaker might already have the worst bits of the full story. Richard weighed his options as the rail bit into the lower half of his spine. He’d backed into the corner by accident.

“Enough,” he finally said, unwilling to admit to anything else, even like this.

Jason glanced him over briefly, then nodded to his hand. “The Blackgaard’s Castle fire. I hear you had something to do with it.”

Letting his burned hand drop from where it hovered at the base of his throat, Richard all but snapped, “Why’d you ask what I know if you already know yourself?”

Again, the hands lifted in a supplication of peace. “Sorry,” Jason said. “Old habits. Listen - Richard - I’m as big a fan of putting Blackgaard away as you are.”

Doubt it, Richard thought.

“If you’ve got something to go on,” and Jason folded his arms, “I’m all ears. Let’s take him down.”

“Why would you believe me?” Richard tried to straighten his posture, tried to unfold himself from his protective stance, tried not to look like the cringing, cowardly little lackey he turned into whenever Blackgaard’s name dropped. He hated being in that body, in that headspace, and he hated that other people could see it on him, too. Somehow, even when they didn’t know who he was at first glance, when they found out, they were never surprised. The pressure of the rail eased as he pulled his spine taut, not that it helped when Jason Whittaker had so much height on him. “If you’ve heard anything, you’ve heard it from Riley, and he’s... not a fan.”

“Oh, I’ve heard it from Tom, all right.”

Richard felt his face twist before he could cover it. Jason Whittaker logged the expression - Richard saw him take it in, saw the flicker of fresh concern and intrigue, and tried to control his own face.

Gently, like Richard was a spooked animal, Jason added, “But you act like I haven’t talked to Connie and Eugene, too.”

Something soft in Richard’s chest coiled. “...What?”

“Richard,” Jason said, leaning back against the rail, casual, “I don’t know if you know what my dad used to do--”

“I do.”

“--then you’ll understand when I say that that’s what I do, too, sometimes. I know how to find things out. If Tom knows about something, then my... slightly more objective friends probably do, too. I told you, I’ve heard a lot of things today. Wanted to make sure I had a few sides to everything, before I talked to you.”

Richard licked his dry lips. “And?”

“And I wish I could talk to Dad about it, too. But I can’t.” Jason’s head tilted to one side, and his gaze softened. “I want to believe you. I want to get Blackgaard, once and for all. And if you can help - if you know anything useful - then... why not team up?”

“You’re willing to trust me? Just like that? Even though Riley--”

“Tom Riley isn’t exactly my moral North Star. He wouldn’t like a lot of what I do.” The quirk at the corner of Jason’s mouth came back, this time as a small, crooked grin, and Richard’s stomach flopped over, ungraceful and uncomfortable and inexplicable. “As far as I can tell, you have nothing to gain and everything to lose coming back here and making wild accusations, especially to Tom’s face. Call me a bleeding heart but that kind of recklessness--”

“I have a plan.”

“Do you?”

Richard cursed inwardly. “A framework for a plan.”

Jason’s grin widened. “That kind of recklessness... gets to me. I want to help.” Then he held out his hand.

Blinking hard, Richard looked down at the gesture of partnership. His exhaustion made him sound far more jaded than he really felt: “You’re not doing this to get me arrested, are you?

“I’m doing this to get one guy arrested,” Jason said, “and that guy isn’t you.” He still had his hand outstretched. “You never know - if this works out, we might want to keep you around. Just in case.”

“In case what? He gets out? He has one more, eviller triplet brother? He has some cyborg doppelganger uploaded somewhere?”

“You never know. Imagine the facial hair on the third triplet.”

Richard didn’t want to, but he almost, almost smiled. “You really do... want to trust me?”

“Why not?” He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “I’ve done stupider things in the past twenty-four hours. I’m willing to risk it.”

Richard bit the side of his cheek, in an effort to distract his overtired feelings from the sudden, sinking grip of relief, like he had been swimming for hours and finally felt sand under his feet, felt solid ground, felt something to grip onto, something to hold him steady. He coughed again, like coughing up old dirty water instead of the residue of bile.

“Okay,” he said, and took Jason’s hand. “If you’re sure.”

Jason grinned again. “Positive.”


	6. when you had not touched me yet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> THIS IS MY FIRST FINISHED FANFIC, FOLKS. WE DID IT.

“It’s like,” Jason says, hands outstretched to the empty room, “when am I going to be  _ me _ ? What does it take to  _ not _ be John Avery Whittaker’s kid? I bet Jana never deals with this.”

“She doesn’t live in Odyssey,” Richard points out dozily. “No one knows Whittaker’s name wherever she lives, probably. Unless they’re real into encyclopedias.” Then, for some godforsaken reason, he blushes. “I mean,  _ Mr. _ Whittaker’s name.”

“Please don’t ever do that again just because I’m here.” Jason shoves him almost off the sofa entirely. “See, you’re doing it, too!”

The tears on Richard’s face dried a long time ago, long enough that it doesn’t even feel strange, like pulling on fabric that’s already too taut, when he smiles, or even laughs. Because Jason’s making him laugh, for some reason, because Jason is still  _ here _ . Richard fell to pieces and Jason didn’t leave or try to make it better all at once; he leaned in and waited and  _ then _ , once the storm had passed, he still stayed and let Richard pull himself back together one bit at a time, and only acted a little awkward once or twice, in a flustered and human way that made Richard a tiny bit flustered, too, which was stupid, because he had just been crying over something dumb. And now there were more feelings in his stomach, but this time, _more_ doesn't necessarily mean _bad_ , which is directly counter to most of the sensations Richard had experienced in his life thus far, but--

_ Shut up, _ he tells his brain.  _ Just shut up for once. We’re not in survival mode right now. _

This is the opposite of survival mode. Curled into a sofa that he bought with his own money, a throw blanket within reach because he felt bougie one day at Target, Christmas socks, low lights, an empty relief in the cave of his chest that the tears washed clean, and Jason Whittaker sitting by him. Talking and making him laugh.

There’s ice cream in the freezer, too. Just something he figures he should remember, in case of a need or desire or occasion or ken for ice cream.

“That’s the hard part,” Richard says, idly massaging his bad knee. “People act like you can just… clean up your act, or whatever. And… and you can, or at least you can try. Or you can set out to do something that’ll change everyone’s opinion about you. You can bust your ass and work harder than you thought you could, do more than you thought you were capable of. But you can’t stand on a street corner handing out flyers that you’ve turned over a new heart or whatever. It’s like asking people to sign a petition outside a grocery store. At best you’ll get… a polite smile. At worst you’ll get yelled at. You know?” He leans his head back against the sofa headrest. “People don’t hand out second chances. You have to just… do your thing. And hope a lot.”

“You sound very wise,” Jason says, “for someone who got their snot on my sleeve two hours ago.”

Richard feels his face heat up again. “Yeah, well, I was a different person back then.”

“Second chance granted.” Jason grins, then gestures to Richard’s leg. “You want a hand with that? Is it sore?”

Oh, God, Jason Whittaker is offering to  _ massage _ his  _ bad leg _ . Richard makes sure his breathing is normal and his heartbeat isn’t beating so loud it drums out of his throat before he responds, cool as any given cucumber, “Nah, I’m fine, it’s just a habit. Thanks, though.”

“No problem.” 

“It’s not fair, though. That you’re… living in his shadow, or whatever. Not that your dad isn’t… he’s great. I… I owe a lot to him.” He grimaces. “You probably hear that all the time, too.”

“Once in a while.” Jason’s voice is so intensely wry that it’s only just this side of bitter. “That’s it, though. How am I supposed to live up to that?”

Richard considers telling Jason about  _ his _ dad. Then he decides it’s not time for that. This isn’t the Complicated Dad Feelings Olympics. He’s already cried in Jason’s arms tonight, anyway; if Jason is willing to open up, too, Richard’ll do the work to meet him halfway.

“If it helps,” he says instead, “I think half the eligible girls in Odyssey think you’re a  _ lot _ cooler than your dad. You’ve got an updated appeal to you that the original version just doesn’t have.” He pauses. “Anymore.”

Jason bursts into laughter. “Are you trying to tell me you think my dad was a - was a - a  _ snack _ ?”

The colloquialism, as Eugene would put it, out of _Jason’s_ mouth almost puts Richard into convulsions. That, and that he never, ever would consider Whit, at any age, a snack, because Whit is practically his  _ grandfather _ , thank you very much, although - wait, no, that would make Jason - this is a whole trainwreck of bad thoughts. Bad, bad thoughts. Eject, get out, retreat. 

The point is, Richard is cackling for a long time because of Jason’s word choice and tone, and it’s ridiculous.

He’s ridiculous. And Richard is ridiculous.

“Anyway,” Jason says once Richard is back under control, “I think you’re being a little - what’s the word? - heteronormative.”

_ "What _ ?”

“Eligible girls. Are you saying I’m not a considerable match for half the eligible boys in Odyssey, too? What about at least some fraction of the nonbinary folks? Am I not good enough for them?”

Richard gapes at him. Being accused of heteronormativity isn’t something he expected, being the infamous bisexual wasteland he’s always considered himself to be.

“I just,” he says, getting his tongue back, “didn’t want to make assumptions. I knew you’d gone out with girls, so--”

“Very diplomatic,” Jason says, raising a placating hand. “I can appreciate that.”

Richard waits for what he considers to be a long enough amount of time. “But… you’d be open to eligible fellas and enbies, too?”

“You could say that.”

“Could, or should?”

“Should.”

Oh, to be casual, cool, cucumberesque. Richard swallows twice like a chicken with a sore throat before saying, “Good to know.”

“Yeah,” Jason said, kind of smiling, his hands clasped around his ankle, attached to the leg crossed over his other leg. “You think?”

“Yeah,” Richard parrots. “It is.”

This is the place where, if Richard had any spine - any, whatsoever, that hadn’t been damaged when he jumped out of the car what feels like a hundred years ago, because the kid who got wheeled out of the hospital is in no way, shape, or form related to the floating, vaguely nauseated-but-in-a-good-way creature he feels like now - anyway, if Richard had some kind of nerve left that hadn’t been smushed to bits at the shore of Trickle Lake, this was where something would have  _ happened _ .  _ Something happening _ is about as specific as he allows it to get, because he’s pretty sure Jason can read his thoughts when they make eye contact, and Richard is a little tipsy on eye contact with Jason right now.

But  _ something _ should  _ happen _ . 

It doesn’t, at least not in the way he wants. But what happens is that Richard asks when Jason knew; Jason responds that it was around college. Richard doesn’t pry any farther than that until Jason nudges him towards the question himself, and Richard says, with an impulsive honesty that has taken a lot of work to develop in a liar’s soul like his, that it took him longer to figure out that he liked girls than he did boys. That makes Jason laugh again.

It goes on. And on. And on. The topic changes and they change positions on the sofa and Richard gets up to get bowls of ice cream, bigger servings than they should have at - he checks the time on his phone, where he didn’t notice until now are about two dozen unnoticed notifications because he never turned sound or vibrate back on - three forty-two in the morning (three forty-two, good grief), but they might as well, right? Because Jason isn’t going anywhere. It’s tacitly understood that Jason isn’t going anywhere. 

They eat the ice cream and Richard turns off the top light, and the soft resulting shadows soften Jason’s face to a Renaissance poignancy. Jason talks when he’s tired and Richard quiets down, so all it is close to five in the morning is Richard, tucked against the sofa cushions, watching Jason talk and occasionally check Richard’s expression with a smile on lips that are still a little stained the color of ice cream, until Richard just… drifts off.

+++

Richard has never woken up with someone else before. None of the very, very few people whom he’s informed of that fact have believed him, but it’s facts. He’s just never trusted anyone enough to let them that close when his guards are that drastically lowered.

So waking up against Jason Whittaker’s shoulder, Jason drooling gently into his hair, is a genuine first, no matter how fake that sounds. 

It’s probably going to be a beautiful day out; there’s buttery yellow sunlight coming in through the slats of the blinds by the door, and a pleasant murmur of wind scrapes the apartment building’s walls. It must be late in the morning, maybe even lunchtime by now, judging by the fact that Richard doesn’t feel, exactly, like he only got three hours of sleep sitting up on his sofa, prodded and shifted by someone else’s movement and existence in general.

Someone else. Jason. 

Richard doesn’t move, tries to keep his breathing consistent. There is a hideous pain in his neck, probably from Jason’s head cramping it down, and his bad leg is aching, and it feels like there’s a corkscrew twisting into some muscle in his back. Every physical impulse is to move and relieve the stress.

But, sitting like this, he can feel Jason breathing, the seesaw movement of his chest moving Richard’s chest in turn. One of Jason’s hands rests, innocently, along the top of Richard’s thigh.

Richard closes his eyes again and decides never to move ever again.

What even happened yesterday? Then again, could it possibly matter, when Richard can just... wake up to this, without even trying?

There’s going to be a fallout from yesterday, he knows, because he’s going to get his picture taken down from that stupid page, or at least he’ll talk to Jack and see if he knows what Richard’s options are, and even then there will be people who come into Whit’s End and bring it up, either to his face or to Connie or Eugene or Bernard or even - God, what if they bring it up to Jason? Richard resists the new urge to move enough to press his face into Jason’s chest. That would be a little much, even this morning. In any case, what brought Jason to his apartment yesterday is going to come back, eventually. It won’t be ignored forever, pasted over with a little honest emotional talk and an impromptu sleepover with someone Richard is pretty sure he’s falling in love with.

Oh, no. He’s falling in love with Jason Whittaker, isn’t he? 

For a second, Richard’s internal monologue is just a string of obscenities. Good thing Jason is asleep and his eyes are closed. 

“You’re frowning already.”

Jason is not asleep and his eyes are open. Richard gets his thoughts under a shred, a scrap, a tiny speck of control, and looks up, trying to be sleepier than he is.

“Huh?” he says.

Jason hesitates, then raises a hand. A single finger, pressed like the tip of a feather to the space between Richard’s eyebrows. “I felt you wake up,” he says. “And then I look and you’re already thinking about something depressing.”

Richard holds still, wondering how long the simple, unfathomable contact can last. Not long, it turns out; Jason takes his hand away almost before he’s done talking. Which is fine. It’s fine.

“Old habits,” Richard says, trying to unfurrow his brow. Funny how he never feels it. He’ll have real, actual wrinkles on his face by age thirty, not just the faint familiar creases. “They die hard.”

“What, thinking about six impossibly bad things before breakfast?”

And it’s funny, not because of the words but because neither of them have moved, except to lift their heads away from each other and, in one particular case, to put a finger to a forehead for less time than it takes to breathe once. They just sit there, the other hand on a leg, shoulder against chest, hip to hip, fingers just brushing someone else’s shirt.

Richard smiles briefly.

“I guess,” he says. “What are you supposed to think of when you wake up?”

Jason is quiet for a suspiciously long time, long enough for Richard to look up at him again, making that all-too-important one-way-telepathy-enabling contact again. The problem is that Jason is already looking, too.

“Usually, something about breakfast,” Jason says quietly. “Breakfast… or work… or chores… or some dumb song, maybe.”

“Yeah?” 

Jason hesitates again. “I don’t really know what I’m thinking about right now. I… uh…”

Richard’s stomach knits itself into tangled loops of nerves.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Jason says at last. “I was just… just thinking that I kind of… it's not the worst way to wake up.”

If his stomach got any worse, he’d have to go puke in a trash can. “Way?” he says, feeling a little cruel to ask for specifics, for hard reliable statement of fact, but unable to live with not knowing for sure. He  _ has _ to know. "What way?"

Jason looks pained, but only superficially. “This… waking up. Here. Like this. You know.”

“ _ Do _ I know?” Richard asks, like an awful, awful person.

For a second, they look at each other. Richard wishes like anything that he could see Jason’s thoughts as clearly as Jason has to see his.

But then, maybe they do, because they both lean up at about the same time, following the same instinct, and Richard’s hand curls into Jason’s shirt properly when their lips meet, light and uncertain and searching.

Richard has never had less thought in his head than right now.

It doesn’t last long. They both draw back at the same time, too, sensing each other’s uncertainty. It’s almost like being drunk, having a first kiss less than ten minutes after waking up, less than five hours after going to sleep sitting up on the sofa (that’s the time on the watch around Jason’s wrist - just after ten, good  _ grief _ ). Dazed and confused, that’s what they are, trying to have their first kiss at a time like this.

But they’re both smiling, a little idiotically. Richard feels like a full-on moron with his knees nervously bumping against Jason’s.

“I thought it’d take forever for you to get the hint,” Jason says, their foreheads still close, their noses not too far away from brushing. “I outed myself and got you to come out, too, and  _ still _ it took another twelve hours.”

“It wasn’t that long,” Richard says, reddening again. His hand is still knotted in Jason’s shirt. “It’s earlier than you think it is.”

Jason grins. He looks cross-eyed, this close, and Richard knows he looks the same to Jason, and he doesn’t care at all. Could not possibly care less. He just got a kiss from this man. He just made this man so irritated that Jason _had_ to kiss him to shut him up. That’s practically a superpower. 

“Well,” Richard says, clearing his throat. “At least someone in this town’ll never try to compare you to your dad about some things.”

He is abruptly kicked onto the floor, and there is no possible way that he can keep from losing what little cool he’s held onto. He clutches his stomach as Jason yells stuff like, “How  _ dare _ you,” and, “Kiss  _ rescinded, _ second chance  _ rescinded _ ,” and, “Unbe _ liev _ able!” He still looks half-asleep, his hair all mussed and a faint blush still high in his cheeks, and Richard only stops laughing so he can admire the view from the floor, where he has a little bit of a temporary headache and enough of a wide-open heart to distract him from the rest.

“I have to go to work today,” Richard says once Jason’s done ranting. He props himself up on one elbow and extends a hand. “I’ll have to give Jack a good excuse for being late.”

“Just say you slept late and you had your phone off,” Jason says, ignoring the hand. 

Richard keeps it extended, enough to make it plaintive. “True enough, but I need a  _ good _ excuse. Not a lazy one.”

Suddenly, Jason takes the hand and pulls, heaving Richard back up to the sofa, on his knees, looking up into Jason’s face. 

“Can I kiss you again?” Jason asks simply, with his hand still wrapped around Richard’s.

Richard combusts from head to toe.

“You can try,” he says, which is stupid, but Jason just grins again and presses his lips to Richard’s, running a thumb along the edge of Richard’s hand.

“There,” Jason says after a few minutes have passed, and the kiss has moved just a little past chaste pecks. Not  _ too _ far past. Just… you know. A little. Richard feels like he’s been swallowing helium when Jason pulls away, taking the oxygen with him. “You have a good excuse now.”

“Wh...what?”

“For missing work.” This time, Jason brushes his thumb beneath Richard’s bottom lip, which is almost better than the actual kissing. He leans into Jason’s hand, eyes fluttering shut, and almost purrs. “Just tell Jack you had a date.”

“Is that what this was?” Richard asks, bringing himself out of his daze with no small amount of effort. “A date?”

“Not really.” Jason briefly looks a little distracted, studying Richard’s face instead of his words, as if curious as to how to put Richard back under that little daze again. He strokes Richard’s jaw with the knuckle of one finger. Richard almost blacks out from the sensation and Jason looks equal parts surprised and amused. “I don’t like starting dates with one person in an emotional breakdown, and most of the date is just trying to talk them off the ledge.”

“Nice use of the ‘them’ pronoun,” Richard mumbles to take the emphasis off his aforementioned meltdown. “Very inclusive. Not heteronormative at all.”

“You’re such a--”

“Careful, Mr. Whittaker, gentle language--”

This is what a superpower feels like. Richard wraps both arms around Jason’s neck this time.

“Can I finish what I was saying about a date now?” Jason asks when he’s done shutting Richard up again.

Jason can do absolutely whatever he wants, in Richard’s opinion. He makes a small, lazy wave of his hand. “Feel free.”

“I was going to say,” Jason continues, his hands comfortably at Richard’s waist, “that last night wasn’t a date, but if you want to give Jack a real, true excuse, we could go out for breakfast. Make it a real date.”

Richard has to swallow several times before he can respond. “You’d be seen in public with a known criminal like me?”

He means it as a lame joke, but of course it will never completely be a joke, at least not for a long time. Jason has the decency to smile but not to brush it off.

“I’d be seen in public with Richard Maxwell,” he says, “someone I find very heroic, and very brave, and very attractive, even though he’s almost a foot shorter than I am.”

God, he doesn’t want to get emotional again. Not on a morning like this. A day like yesterday, sure, but not a morning like this. “I am  _ not _ .”

“We can get a tape measure and confirm,” Jason says, “or we can just go to Hal’s Diner and argue about it there.”

It’s not the part that Richard was contesting, but he doesn’t feel like arguing about it, here or at Hal’s or anywhere else. He tightens his arms around Jason’s neck again, and doesn’t go for a kiss this time - just for a hug. A tight, grateful hug. Jason’s hands slip up his back and press him even closer, until he’s pretty sure he can feel his own heartbeat against Jason’s chest.

“Deal,” he says.


End file.
